Name: Gardner River

County: Park

Authority Name: Gardner River (Wyo. and Mont.)

GNIS Entry

Longitude:  1104201W

Latitude: 450147N 

Legal Description:

Elevation: 5236/1596

(ft/m)

Feature Type: Stream

Origin of Name:

River, Yellowstone National Park, Wyo., ... flows northeast 3 1/2 miles, southeast 8 miles, to junction with Obsidian Creek, northerly, crossing park boundary, flowing into Yellowstone River. Probably named for a trapper.

Source: Decisions, 1890-1932

Stream about 25 miles long, in Yellowstone National Park, heading east of Joseph Peak ... and flowing northeastward, then generally southeastward, through Gardners Hole, and then generally northward to the Yellowstone River just east of Gardiner.

Source: Decisions, 1960

Named for Johnson Gardner, one of the so called free trappers. There are extant articles of agreement between him and Kenneth McKenzie, the bourgeois in charge of the American Fur Company post at Fort Union, relating to equipment and furs for the year 1832. There is also a statement of Gardner's account at Fort Union in the summer of 1832 and a bill of lading of furs shipped on the bull boat "Antoine" from the "Crossing of the Yellowstone," July 18 of the same year.

Source: WPA 

This name, which, after "Yellowstone," is the most familiar and important name in the Park, is the most difficult to account for. The first authentic use of the name occurs in 1870, in the writings of the Washburn party. In Mr. Langford's journal, kept during the expedition, is the following entry for August 25, 1870: "At nineteen miles from our morning camp we came to Gardiner River, at the mouth of which we camped." As the party did not originate the name, and as they make no special reference to it in any of their writings, it seems clear that it must already have been known to them at the time of their arrival at the stream. None of the surviving members has the least recollection concerning it. The stream had been known to prospectors during the preceding few years as Warm Spring Creek, and the many "old timers" consulted on the subject erroneously think that the present name was given by the Washburn Party or by the Hayden Party of 1871. What is its real origin is therefore a good deal of a mystery.

The only clue, and that not a satisfactory one, which has come under our observation, is to be found in the book "River of the West," (Victor, Mrs. Frances A. Fuller. The River of the West. Hartford, Connecticut and Toledo, Ohio: R. W. Bliss and Co., 1870.) already quoted. Reference is there made to a trapper by the name of Gardiner, who lived in the Upper Yellowstone country as far back as 1830, and was at one time a companion of Joseph Meek, the hero of the book. In another place it is stated that in 1838, Meek started alone from Missouri Lake (probably Red Rock Lake) " for the Gallatin Fork of the Missouri, trapping in a mountain basin called Gardiner's Hole. . . . On his return, in another basin called Burnt Hole, he found a buffalo skull, etc." As is well known, the sources of the Gallatin and Gardiner are interlaced with each other, and this reference strongly points to the present Gardiner Valley as " Gardiner's Hole." The route across the Gallatin Range to Mammoth Hot Springs, and thence back by way of the Firehole Basin, was doubtless a natural one then as it is now. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that this name came from an old hunter in the early years of the century, and that the Washburn Party received it from some surviving descendant of those times.

Source: Chittenden 

Other Names: Gardener Creek, Gardners Fork, Warm Spring Creek, Warm-stream Creek

Alternative Spellings: Gardiner River

History:

Stories:

Maps:

1:24000 Quadrangle: Gardiner

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